What Counts as a Human Business?

If your business doesn’t have these characteristics, please don’t call it “human”

Earlier this year, I attended a marketing insights conference in Brooklyn, where the first presentation, by a senior vice president of insights and strategy, had the title, “The Human Approach in the Age of Big Data”. I was looking forward to the talk, but it turned out that the so-called human approach being advocated by the presenter was the use of automated digital eye movement tracking software.

The next morning, the director of insights at Microsoft got a little bit more personal. In her presentation, called “The Future of Insights is Human”, she acknowledged that the culture of data-driven business is running people ragged. She explained how she wants her team to serve as storytellers within Microsoft, but they end up being used as mere conduits for reporting quantitative data. The rapid pace at which requests for these reports came in, she said, prevented her team from engaging in much storytelling, or providing any substantial human analysis at all. She was frustrated at the lack of time her staff had for any reflection on the significance of the data they were reporting.

As she spoke to the conference, the director’s voice quavered with exhaustion. She clearly wanted the future of business insights to be human, but Microsoft wouldn’t give her the resources she needed to make space for humanity in her department’s work. She longed for human business, but without a human process in place, humanity was forced to stand aside for the sake of efficiency.

It’s all too easy for businesses to slap the word “human” into their mission statements and promotional materials as a catchphrase while putting conventional schemes of mechanistic and digital efficiency at the center of their operations. Running a genuinely human business requires much more than just a mention of humanity in a mission statement.

The Qualities of Human Business

An authentically human business works with the complex reality of what it is to be human.

To be human is to be biological, with basic needs that can’t be sustainably compromised.

To be human is to be emotional, with a rich diversity of subjective feelings that transcend our rational interests.

To be human is to be cultural, with traditions of myth, ritual, and belief.

To be human is to be subjective, a consciousness with its own perspective, real in its own terms that cannot be reduced to the measurements of the physical framework that makes it possible.

To be human is to be flawed, and not in the sense of needing to be fixed.

To be human is to be vulnerable, and thus to be prepared for the opportunity of transformation.

To be human is to be fluid and ambiguous, evading quick and easy assessments that aim to pin us down.

To be human is to be bizarre. If a person isn’t a bit weird, that’s what makes them weird.

Most importantly, to be human is to be present. A human being can’t be in more than one place at a time, not even using digital technology.

If your business doesn’t consistently summon these qualities, it isn’t human.

This article is an excerpt from the first episode of the second season of the podcast This Human Business.